Chapter 2

When he smiled he had white, even teeth, for which no thanks were due to
nature.

“Per-fectly understood. Come again, Miss Mary Lane. I’ll be back from
abroad in three weeks.”

She took his big, limp hand and shook it. Mike escorted her out and
helped her into her coat.

“Another hour for me and then I pack up,” he said. “He never stays after
one. By the way, I’ll bring on your gift to the theatre.”

She liked Mike–everybody liked Mike. There was hardly an actor or an
actress in London who had not agreed to take half-salary from him. He
could cry very convincingly when he was ruined, and he was always ruined
when hard-hearted people expected him to pay what he owed them.

A lovable soul, entirely dishonest. Nobody knew what he did with the
money which he had lost for so many people, but the probability is that
it was usefully employed.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with our play,” he said, as he walked
with her along the corridor to the elevator. “Maybe it’s the
title–_Cliffs of Fate_–what does it mean? I’ve seen the darn’ thing
forty times and still I don’t know what it’s about.”

She stared at him, aghast.

“But you chose it!” she protested.

He shook his head.

“He did.” He jerked his thumb back to Mr. Wirth’s suite. “He said it
made him feel a better man when he read it. It’s never made _me_ want to
go more regularly to the synagogue!”

He saw Mary depart, fussed over her like a broody hen. He liked Mary
because she was real in a world of unreality. The first time he had
taken her out to supper he had offered her a few suggestions on the
quickest method by which a young actress might reach stardom, and her
name in lights, and she had answered him sanely and yet in a way that
did not entirely wound his vanity–and the vanity of a fat man is
prodigious.

Thereafter she went into a new category: he had many; she was the only
woman in the world he really liked, though, it is said, he loved many.
He strolled back to the hectic atmosphere of the supper-room–Mr. Wirth
was presenting the bags.

He was unusually gay: usually he drank very little, but tonight …
Well, he had promised to drink a whole bottle of champagne if anybody
guessed his age, and one of the three pretty girls had guessed
thirty-two.

“Good God!” said Mike, when they told him.

As soon as was expedient he took his patron aside.

“About time these people went, Mr. Wirth,” he said.

Mr. Wirth smiled foolishly; spoke with the refinement which wine brings
to some.

“My deah, deah fellah! I’m quate ceepable of draving myself to deah old
Coventry.”

Certainly this was a new Mr. Wirth. Mike Hennessey was troubled. He felt
he was in danger of losing a priceless possession. It was as though the
owner of a secret gold mine, from which he was drawing a rich dividend,
were hoisting a great flapping flag to mark its site.

“What you want,” he said agitatedly, “is something cooling. Just wait
here, will you?”

He ran out, saw the head waiter, and came back very soon with a little
blue bottle. He measured a tablespoonful of white granules into a
wine-glass and filled it with water; then he handed this fizzling,
hissing potion to the giver of the feast.

“Drink,” he said.

Mr. Wirth obeyed. He stopped and gasped between the gulps.

By now the last guest had gone.

“All right?” asked Mike anxiously.

“Quite all right,” snapped the other.

He seemed suddenly sober. Mike, at any rate, was deceived. He did not
see his friend to his car because that was against the rules. Mr. Wirth,
wrapped in a heavy coat, the collar of which was turned up, his opera
hat at a rakish angle over his eyes, made his way to the garage near
the hotel, had his car brought out, and was getting into it when the
watcher sidled up to him.

“Can I have a word with you, mister?”

Mr. Wirth surveyed him glassily, climbed into his seat and shifted his
gear.

“Can I have a word—-“

The car jerked forward. The little interviewer, who had one foot on the
running board, was sent sprawling. He got up and began to run after the
car, to the amusement of the garage workers; car and pursuer vanished in
the darkness.

CHAPTER TWO

The trailer lost his quarry in Oxford Street and wandered disconsolately
onward. A sort of homing instinct led him towards Regent’s Park. Naylors
Crescent was a magnificent little side street leading from the outer
circle. It was very silent, its small, but stately, houses were in
darkness.

Mr. Tickler–such was his peculiar name–stopped before No. 17 and
looked up at the windows. The white blinds were drawn down and the house
was lifeless. He stood, with his hands thrust into his pockets, blinking
at the green door that he knew so well, at the three worn steps leading
down, and the hollow steel railway that masons had fixed into the
stonework to allow the easy descent of a bath-chair.

Inside was wealth, immense, incalculable wealth, and a stupid old man on
the verge of the grave. Outside were poverty and resentment, the
recollection of the rigours of Pentonville Prison, a sense of injustice.
Old Lyne slept on the first floor. His bed was between these two high
windows. That lower window marked the study where he sat in the daytime.
There was a safe in the wall, full of useless old papers. Old Lyne never
kept money in the house. All his life he had advertised this habit. A
burglar or two had gone to enormous trouble to prove him a liar and had
got nothing for their pains.

There he was, sleeping in luxury, the old rat, under featherweight
blankets specially woven for him, under a satin coverlet packed tight
with rare down, and here was he, Horace Tom Tickler, with a pinch of
silver in his pocket.

But, perhaps he was not there at all? That was an old trick of his, to
be out when everybody thought he was in, and in when they thought he was
out.

He walked up and down the quiet cul-de-sac for nearly an hour, turning
over in his mind numerous schemes, mostly impracticable, then he
slouched back towards the bright streets and coffee stalls. He took a
short cut through the mews to reach Portland Place, and the most
astounding luck was with him.

A policeman walking through Baynes Mews heard the sound of a man
singing. It was, if his hearing gave a right impression, the voice of
one who had gone far in insobriety, and the voice came from a tiny flat,
one of the many above the garages that lined each side of the mews. Time
was when they were occupied exclusively by coachmen and chauffeurs, but
the artistic and aristocratic classes had swamped these humble West End
habitations, and more than half of the new population of Baynes Mews
were people who dressed for dinner and came home from parries and night
clubs, their arms filled with gala favours, some of which made strange
and distressing noises.

There was nothing in the voice to indicate anything more startling than
normal inebriety. The policeman would have passed on but for the fact
that he saw a figure sitting on the step of the narrow door which led to
the little flat above.